


Lucky Number Thirteen

by Margo_Kim



Category: The Black Tapes Podcast
Genre: F/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Originally Posted on Tumblr, POV Strand, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-05
Updated: 2016-03-05
Packaged: 2018-05-24 20:21:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6165586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Margo_Kim/pseuds/Margo_Kim
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Richard Strand get punched in the face a reasonable amount, considering the world he's working in. He's used to it. Alex? Not so much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lucky Number Thirteen

In Richard Strand’s life, he’s been punched thirteen times to the face (nine solidly connecting), seven of which were unpleasant but understandable. If you are compiling an account of more general attacks upon his body, the number would be closer to fifty, which sounds more dramatic than it is. Most people don’t know how to fight. Strand, by necessity, does—at least more than the average charlatan outraged at being debunked. As to how many attacks Strand deserved, it would depend on your metric. Without condoning violence as a response to indisputable science, some aggressions are certainly more prompted than others. Strand understands human psychology, and the corollary to that is that he should act with some consideration of human psychology in mind. It’s small minds that believe in baseless superstition, and small minds get frightened when confronted with evidence that contradicts their beliefs. Humans on the whole prefer anger to terror, and so fear gets sublimated into aggression which in turn gets sublimated into a fist aimed at Strand’s nose. As he said—unpleasant but understandable.

“Wow,” says Alex. “If this is you being gracious, I get why people punch you so much.”

“I didn’t say I was being gracious. I was explaining why I’m not going to press charges,” says Strand, who sounds to his own ears as if he is suffering from a particularly bad cold. Vanity flairs up for a moment; he won’t sound very impressive on the radio right now.

The first time Strand got punched in the face was when he was sixteen-years-old. He deserved it. The last time (as of now) was about ten minutes ago. Whether or not he deserved it is arguable. Mr. Fiore would likely offer a different case than would Strand, but Fiore can keep it to himself unless he wants Strand to reconsider pressing charges. Despite what he told Alex, Strand is very tempted to get the police involved out of sheer annoyance—surely if you were irrational enough to believe in ghosts you would find it a _relief_ rather than an insult to be told that your family’s house wasn’t haunted—but Fiore is finally agreeing to go on the record to keep Strand happy. Alex will get her interview so long as there’s no trouble for Fiore. Since Alex won’t have an episode this week if Fiore won’t let himself be recorded, Strand can swallow his pride. And a fair amount of blood that’s pooled down through his nasal cavity.

At least the Fiores’ dishtowel that he’s been pressing to his nose is likely ruined. That’ll have to suffice for revenge.

Alex stands when Mrs. Fiore comes back into the dining room. She pushes herself to her feet by placing her hand on Strand’s shoulder, and then she keeps her hand there. “Did you find something?” Alex asks, an edge to her voice that Strand’s never heard before.

Correction re: hand placement— _most_ of Alex’s hand is placed on Strand’s shoulder. Her tip of her thumb more accurately can be described as being on the curve of his neck just over the boundary of seam that delineates his sweater from his skin.

Mrs. Fiore nods and holds out a crinkling bag. “For the swelling.”

Every home with a small child seems to have a packet of frozen peas that never gets eaten. Strand almost asks Mrs. Fiore how many wounds it’s been pressed to before and if it’s ever been washed, but Alex takes it before Strand can open his mouth. Then Alex gives him a look. She has a face wasted on radio: it’s not especially beautiful from an objective standpoint, but it is uniquely expressive. What it’s expressing now is _please don’t say anything that’s going to get you punched again._ So he doesn’t say anything at all.

The fact that she squeezes his shoulder at the same time that she gives him the look might have something to do with that, but he’s not sure what.

“Tell your husband I’ll be with him in a few minutes,” Alex says.

“He is very sorry—” Mrs. Fiore begins.

“Good! He’s a grown man, he shouldn’t be punching anyone.” Alex glances down at Strand. “Especially someone who’s just trying to help your family understand what’s going on.”

That hadn’t been Strand’s intention at all. Disabusing the Fiore family of their shared delusion of haunting would only be to their benefit, true, but Strand hadn’t been thinking about that during the conversation that had ended so abruptly. He’d been thinking about the microphone in Alex’s hand, and how clever he would sound when it replayed what it had heard.  

When Mrs. Fiore leaves, Alex adds to Strand, “Of course you totally shouldn’t have talked to him like that. I call already see what the Reddit forum-thing is going to say about that.”

“Variations on what people have said about me for years,” says Strand. “I’m used to it.”

Alex turns the bag of peas over in her hand. Then she takes her hand off his shoulder; the thumb presses down against his bare skin as powerfully as if it is hitting a pressure point. She tugs the blood-soiled towel out of his hands, wraps it around the iced peas, and brings it back to his face. He is in mind of those scenes in movies where one person chloroforms another: a milder variant of that gesture, just as Alex’s presence is a gentler kind of soporific than that of the chemical. That is to say, when she tips his head back, one hand against the back of his skull, another pressing the cold pack against his swollen nose, he feels altogether more relaxed than he by any right should be.  

“I can’t believe you’ve been punched thirteen times,” she says conversationally.

Strand thinks of saying something about the fact that he is very much capable of holding the cold pack to his face himself, that there is no objective need for her to do it for him, any more than there is a need for the fingers of her other hand to curl as they do through his hair. But he can think of nothing to say on the subject except to point out these basic facts of which Alex is surely aware, and she has told him a number of times that she doesn’t appreciate being condescended to.

And if she somehow unaware (a ridiculous and improbable idea, except that her hands feel perfectly calm while Strand—the only person present he can be absolutely certain is aware of their placement and thus his only reliable comparison point for reaction—can feel his pulse in his fingertips), then stating the facts above might result in the rectification of those facts, i.e. the removal of the unconscious physical contact. An unacceptable outcome. Strand doesn’t want to think why.

In his defense, he has just been punched in the face. That ought to earn a man some measure of relief from thinking for a while.

“To the face,” Strand instead clarifies. “The number of punches I’ve sustained overall is significantly higher.”

“You know, most researchers really can’t say that.”

“Most researchers lack my commitment.”

“Or maybe you lack a little tact.”

Strand’s nose throbs. “You’re not wrong.”

 An additional note on their conversation: it is peppered, as it always is between them, with the type of laughter difficult to denote. In a linguistic analysis of their exchange, the transcriber might simply mark their laughter as a particular exhale of breath. It is a strange punctuation to each of their sentences.

It is another thing Strand has decided not to think about.

And it’s quite easy not to think at the moment. Alex’s thumb, the same one that had pressed against his neck, has started rubbing small circles in the short hair at his nape. All he is capable of thinking of at this moment is the movement of that thumb. “So this is precisely your thirteenth face punch,” Alex says. “I hope it’s not particularly unlucky or anything.”

“Luck doesn’t exist,” says Strand automatically. “The idea of good luck or bad luck is just one of the most widespread cases of mass apophenia.”

Alex laughs. It’s a proper laugh. In a transcription of this conversation—were it ever to air, and knowing Alex and Nic it very well might—the transcriber would have to put _[laughs]_. Just like that, so everyone would know even if they were only reading. “You know what internet’s probably going to say about this?” she asks.

“What?”

“That thirteen times seems too low.”

But her thumb is still drawing circles where his skull connects to his spine.

When Strand was lecturing Fiore, it might not have been the microphone that he was trying to impress. And he knows it wasn’t the audience of the least skeptical program on skepticism that Strand has ever let himself be a part of. And he is certain that the reason that Fiore’s fist connected (Strand had been getting so good at dodging) was because Strand took his eyes off the man he was ostensible talking with, to see how his intended audience was reacting.

Strand’s not admitting anything more than that. Except for the thing that he accidentally admits aloud.

“This is the most pleasant aftermath to a punch I’ve had,” he says.

The thumb stops moving.

Strand is very glad that most of his face is hidden by the dishtowel.

“Good,” Alex says. “I mean—you know. Don’t make a habit of it or anything. Or I guess, anymore of a habit than you do already. Getting punched, I mean.”

He had drawn attention to her physical contact. Whether or not it was unconscious before, it is being removed now. Her hand draws away from the back of his head.

“I should go—”

“Talk to Fiore.”

“Yeah. Yeah. Nic’ll kill me if we got all this way without him on tape.”

She’s still holding the cold pack to his face. Without thinking (the absence of conscious thought ceasing to be the pleasant blankness it had been a moment ago), Strand raises his hand and places it over hers. It seems, he rapidly reasons as he feels her fingers underneath his, the most efficient way to transfer their positioning.

Her skin is soft and warm as the frozen peas are cold.

Strand can honestly say that’s never a sentence he’s thought about a woman’s hand before.

She slides her hand out from underneath his. His own skin feels as if it’s been stroking menthol. “Right,” Alex says. “Interview.”

“Right,” Strand says. “You should—”

“Go do that.”

“Yes, I should. Go follow up on the Fiore family—”

“Delusions.”

“Demons.”

“Alleged demons.”

Alex smiles. Her face is not objectively beautiful. But good science requires the admission of bias. “Just alleged? Not imaginary? I think that’s the closest thing to admitting something supernatural could exist that you’ve ever gotten.”

She’s right. It worries him more than she can imagine. “Well, I did just get punched. Maybe it’s time to learn some tact.”

Alex takes a step back, her body heading out of the den, her eyes still looking at him. “Please. We know it’ll take more than one hit to knock the skepticism out of you.”

“Then maybe it’s brain damage.”

Alex laughs. _[Laughs]._ But the recorder won’t capture the look on her face now.

Strand isn’t sure he can either.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted over at [my tumblr](http://margotkim.tumblr.com/post/140461801031/lucky-number-thirteen-black-tapes-podcast-fic). I'm still catching up on the canon (although at the speed I'm going, I'll be finished by like tomorrow) so I hope it's all in character as far as everything that's aired.


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